Month: October 2017

I saw a woman out in public yesterday. She was wearing a knee brace, and had an energy abscess throbbing between the jointure of her femur and lower leg bones.

She limped, naturally, when she walked, and her face was tired.

I saw a drug dealer about four years ago, outside a crumbling strip mall. I’ve never seen such torn-up hunger in a human body. You know those shocking photographs magazines like to use, of little children starving to death in Africa? His soul was like that, but stretched out long to fill a man’s grown body.

The woman I mentioned first was with her lover; they had a kid, and the child called the man by his first name. Unless they were progressive types, I think she was divorced, and he was her boyfriend.

Much of the spiritual abscess in her knee was rooted to an old woman; her own mother, or her lover’s mother had planted it there.

When The Writing Is Weak

Sometimes your writing sucks. Because you have to write a good deal in order to finish projects, it stands to reason that some of the writing isn’t as good as other parts.

Use The Awful Mess

When you write a poor patch, don’t delete it, and don’t rewrite the whole to make it prettier or better.

Take it, isolate it, and find each crack. Such writing is full of ragged breaks–places where the impulse to communicate breaks over the edges.

Take The Awful Mess, And Explain It

Here I will demonstrate such a piece of broken writing (awful mess, I call this kind), and show how to isolate each crack and fold of incoherence.

For context; John and Claire are standing over the mostly-buried corpse of a monster in the woods.

She grimaced, but her eyes filled up with tears. She climbed gingerly down into the wide hole and began to push the earth away from the mound. John caught up her hands away from the dirt.

“Don’t think like that,” he said.

“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” Claire said.

“Do too,” he said.

“Do not,” she said.

“I do, too,” he said. “I always know what you’re thinking.”

“And I always know when you’re lying,” Claire said. John let go of her hands. His mouth thinned into a straight line.

“Let’s see what this is,” he said.

“It’s a dragon,” Claire said. “Obviously.”

Now, the cracks:

She grimaced, [there’s a hole here, where the reason for her grimace, and the source of her tears should be] but her eyes filled up with tears. She climbed gingerly down into the wide hole and began to push the earth away from the mound. [Another crack is right here, where we should see John’s reaction to her physical signals] John caught up her hands away from the dirt.

“Do not,” she said. [If there is annoyance here, it would add structure]

“I do, too,” he said. “I always know what you’re thinking.” [She must have a reaction to this; the scene may change directions, after her reaction is added]

“And I always know when you’re lying,” Claire said. [The last two sentences after this are opaque, and must be peeled back to show his internal life] John let go of her hands. His mouth thinned into a straight line. [Another transition is missing here, between his anger and his next line]

“Let’s see what this is,” he said.

“It’s a dragon,” Claire said. [One last missing impulse here, showing her vulnerability and decision to be caustic] “Obviously.”

Add Stylistic Details To Bring Beauty

The easiest way (and the sneakiest) to revive and salvage writing like this is to add vulnerability, transitional elements, and character justification for seemingly incongruous actions. Sometimes you may feel you’re contorting to justify, but as long as the impulses written originally don’t jar with the themes of the whole, most messy writing can be saved and altered into a useable form.

Let’s take a look at this excerpt again, with some vulnerability and justification added in.

She grimaced, because his tenderness made a raging heat in her heart. She wanted to hide how empty and raw he’d made her feel, but her eyes filled up with tears. She climbed gingerly down into the wide hole and began to push the earth away from the mound. John watched the tremble in her shoulders, where the promise of sorrow lay buried. He bit impulsively at his lips, and caught her hands away from the dirt, clasping them in his own. He wove his fingers through hers, and pulled her close.

“Don’t think like that,” he said. Claire pulled back; he drew her close, and nuzzled at her cheek. She sighed, and leaned into his face.

“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” Claire mumbled.

“Do too,” he said.

“Do not,” she said. A tinge of fondness was in her voice. He grinned.

“I do, too,” he said. “I always know what you’re thinking.”

She did pull away then, and studied his eyes. He gave her a charming smile. She frowned.

“And I always know when you’re lying,” Claire said. There was something so raw and pure in her whole face that John let go of her hands. He opened his mouth to defend himself, to say he had another wife, a woman who’d come first and held some nominal claim to his time. Claire raised her eyebrows in the knowing way she had, and he blushed. His mouth thinned into a straight line.

“Let’s see what this is,” he said.

“It’s a dragon,” Claire said. The pain he’d almost pushed away surged back, and coated her skin with a humiliating blush. She felt the wet of tears in her eyes, and shook her head with a laugh. “Obviously.”

Salvage Poor Writing With Justifying Character Revelations

If you write an awful mess, and it gels with the thematic feeling of the whole, break that part down and isolate the cracks. Character vulnerability, additional transitions, and internal justification will do much to transform awful writing into clean, satisfying prose.

You’re reading Victor Poole. You can’t clear an energy abscess without isolating the root cause of the infection. Harder Than Rocks is elegant and short, if you’re looking for a weekend read.

We all have moments when it’s hard to write. The difference between a writer who sits on a heap of finished material and a writer who wants to rest so is what they do when they don’t want to write.

Step One:

Reassign the problem to a parent cause that is externalized and unemotional.

Not writing has nothing to do with inherent ability, talent, charm, or skill. It has mostly to do with energy management.

What Does That Mean, Victor Poole?

It means you either don’t have time, or, more likely, you feel you don’t have time. Time to write, that is. When you feel you don’t have time, trying to write becomes almost impossible, because your mind is whirling over all the other things you ought/could/should be doing.

Addressing the “can’t” in your brain and spirit is the quickest way to get back to writing.

The Implacable Pressure Of The “Should”

Something that helps clear away guilty energy is what we’ll call the aura-plunger. (Elegant, I know.)

Here is a plunger:

Now the purpose of a plunger is to force a blockage through a narrow space.

“Should” thoughts are the shit of your energy management. Hence, the plunger.

Our plunger is called Death.

Death introduces urgency and meaning into our everyday management of time. Just think; if you were never going to die at all, would you be in a hurry to achieve your goals? I mean the hard goals, the ones it kind of itches through your soul to try for. The goals that are always sort of teasing at the back of your mind, making you feel a heavy, inescapable guilt.

Death, The Pipe-Cleaner Of Your Internal Vessel

Take a deep breath, and play a game with me. Imagine that you know for an absolute fact that you’re going to expire peacefully, without any pain, in your sleep exactly six months from today. You have a mysterious benefactor who is going to tidy up all your affairs, and watch after your dependents, and you have nothing to worry about except the fact of ending.

After the surge of OMG DEATH!, what’s the first regret, the first bittersweet something-or-other that rises through your heart? I mean at the thought of not finishing things.

And Now, The Completion Of Step One

Turn your mind towards your writing. What is bittersweet there? There are books you’re thinking of that are personal, that feed your soul, and there are others you’re writing purely for selfish ego-stroking purposes (to impress someone else, or to feel responsible and worthy).

Now, in your mind, make a little black mark through the center of the dead projects, the ones that you don’t feel anything but impatient with when you imagine dying.

Take a little golden glow, and surge that up around the nice ideas, the ones that make you feel full and proud. (This elevates the importance and urgency of these projects in your conscious mind; it helps you find time.)

Step Two: Fresh Blood, Energetically Speaking

I’m going to be a little snark-bitch now, and withhold step two. It’s far more valuable for you to start to think of how to get more life yourself, than for someone like me (an outsider) to tell you what to do.

Instead, here is a fiction sample.

Examples

Shitty Writing:

Silvia never thought about murdering anyone, until she saw the alien scanners recording her mother’s death. The blood, and the strange, limp hollows in her mama’s eyes made ugly things rise up in Silvia. She thought of murdering the alien who pressed the video controls.

A crackle of sound moved through the air; she turned her eyes back to the recording, and saw a narrow, silver body step into the pool of blood.

“She’s lost too much. Bring her back, and kill her slowly this time. I want her heart,” the silver being said in a sibilant voice.

Silvia’s own heart pounded as she watched a cloud of dark blue insects close over her mother’s corpse. The body sucked in spilled blood, and began to twitch. A keening groan emerged from her mother’s throat.

“That’s enough; she’s living. Do it slower, this time,” the silver thing commanded.

“That’s enough,” Procaltho said. The alien at the video controls turned off the picture. Silvia hadn’t realized until that moment that she’d been holding her breath.

“Where is she?” Silvia gasped.

“Your mother is dead,” Procaltho said.

I know, Silvia wanted to shout.

“The other one, the silver body. Where’s she?”

“It is not a mortal thing. Cannot be killed,” Procaltho said with a dismissive frown.

“How do I become immortal, then?” Silvia demanded.

Procaltho turned his eyes to her, a thoughtful expression through his eyes.

Silvia never thought about murdering anyone, until she saw the alien scanners play back her mother’s death.

Silvia’s captor, the alien Procaltho, studied her as she watched the holoscreen. A peon, some alien male, thin green with yellow eyes, controlled the buttons that replayed the scene. This alien was half the size of Procaltho, and seemed almost composed of tissue paper. His lungs made interesting flutters under the cavity of his chest, and his hands were webbed and tense over the knobs.

Silvia’s hands, tied back with soft blue plants to a sturdy ring, clenched into fists as the first image filtered into view. Her mother was forced back against a brick wall, her blond hair streaming in a mess over her neck, and her pale eyes wild with fear. Two monsters, like hairless, bloodless bears held her by the arms. One pushed a laser rod through Silvia’s mother’s side, and pulled down to make a gaping rent. The blood, and the suddenly strange, limp hollows under her mama’s eyes made ugly things rise up in Silvia. She thought of murdering the alien who pressed the video controls.

A crackle of sound moved through the air; Silvia watched the peon fumble at the knobs. She turned her eyes back to the recording and saw a narrow, silver body step into the pool of blood.

“She’s lost too much. Bring her back, and kill her slowly this time. I want her heart,” the silver being said in a sibilant voice.

Silvia’s own heart pounded as she watched a cloud of dark blue dust, a nanotech flock, emerge from one beast’s throat and close over her mother’s corpse. The body sucked in much of the spilled blood, and began to twitch. A keening groan emerged deep in her mother’s throat.

“That’s enough; she’s living. Do it slower this time,” the silver thing commanded.

“That’s enough,” Procaltho said. The alien at the controls turned off the picture. Silvia hadn’t realized until that moment that she’d been holding her breath. Her knuckles ached. She no longer feared Procaltho’s hard face, or trembled at the memory of his greedy hand.

“Where is she?” Silvia gasped.

“Your mother is dead,” Procaltho said.

I know, Silvia wanted to shout.

“The other one, the silver body. Where’s she?”

“It is not a mortal thing. Cannot be killed by you,” Procaltho said. He eyed her with subdued interest. Silvia felt a snarl rise through her mouth; she curled her upper lip. He licked his own lip, and studied the flushing of her face. Well? his eyes seemed to ask, and she felt the real question behind his eyes.

“How do I become immortal, then?” Silvia asked.

“Get out,” Procaltho said to the small alien. The green being left; the room was hollow between them, when he’d gone. Silvia twisted her body, presenting her bound hands as much as she could.

Procaltho came slowly to her, and released the tough weeds. They softened over her hands, and dropped down to the floor. She turned to face him. He didn’t speak, but there was hunger in his eyes.

You might be stagnant right now. Emotionally, I mean. To write well, you’ve got to open up your internal flow. Here’s how.

What Causes Emotional Stagnation?

Gosh, nearly everything can. Fear of what may be, spiritual possession, emotional theft, and the opening of tremors from your past all slow the internal flow.

How To Diagnose Yourself

If you’re emotionally stagnant, you have a lot of energy blockage through your heart and in your neck. You have a hard time breathing, and your brain feels just a little hazy.

Send your mind down into your home-center, which is right under the top of your sternum. Picture, let’s see.

Now, somewhere under the tip of that bone there’s a cluster of prescient knowledge about yourself. If you shove your concentration in there, and let yourself feel things, a person or a situation is going to rise up in your mind.

There it is; that’s the source for what you’re experiencing just now. Sometimes there are ten things stacked on top of each other, but for now, we’ll only look at the top one.

Pull it out of your body, as if it were a piece of colored tissue paper, and let it hover in the air right in front of your chest.

Step One: Tear The Paper Up

We’ve pulled out the top-most cause of your stagnation, and imagined it as a colored piece of tissue paper. Go ahead and tear it all to bits. Really rip the thing to shreds, as if you were trying to make sure there was no piece left bigger than your thumb.

Once you’ve destroyed that piece, make the scraps into a little heap on the floor at your feet. Got that? Great.

Step Two: Bring Fire From The Lumbar Vertebrae

Your spine is filled with three different sections of vertebrae; the bottommost bones are called the lumbar vertebrae. Here’s a picture:

Those bottom ones are what we want. Now, at the very base of your spine, imagine a lick of fire, like the flame of a steadily-burning candle, right between the double rise of your pelvic bones. This fire is going to burn up your lumbar vertebrae, and when it reaches the full top of that gentle curve, take a lick of fire into your hand and put the flame into your heap of paper on the floor.

Take that fire and lay it against the tissue paper scraps. The colored scraps will burn up as readily as hair, and leave something like mist behind.

Step Three: Breathe In The Mist

You’re going to consume your burned-up problem now. Like a cleansing acid (the friendly kind), that mist from the colored paper will flow through your nostrils, down through your lungs, and spread all in your veins.

Your own pain acts as an accelerant to your natural soul. Pulling out, burning, and then breathing in your blockage eats away all the blockage, and makes a temporary surge of comfort and sweet pain, like love, flow all through your aura.

And Now You Can Write With Loosened, Free Emotions

To recap: send your mind behind the top of your sternum, and find a knot of colored energy there. Pull that energy out; it’s a thought of a person, or about a situation in your life. It doesn’t matter what it is, or how you feel about it.

Pull the energy out, and imagine it as a solid piece of colored tissue paper hovering in the air in front of your chest.

Now tear it all to bits and arrange it in a tidy heap just at your feet. Feel a flame of licking, raw fire at the base of your spine, and allow it to burn up and fill your lumbar curve. As soon as the fire fills up to the tip of that lumbar section, take some flame in your hand and feed it against the pile of tissue paper.

The paper will consume at once into a sweet mist; breathe in that mist, and feel a rush of warmth, of bittersweet longing, and of emotional life go through your veins.

And Now, You’re Ready To Write

This is an exercise that takes just a moment to perform. In three steps, you can bring strong movement through your emotional life and write with clear, bright feeling and a strong flow.

You’re reading Victor Poole. My books are designed to heal several hidden things.

How To Get Stronger Voice

Standing out in the crowd of books is hard; to make yourself unique and memorable, the more you can sound like your deepest self, the better.

First, Strip Tension

This is really hard to sustain without repetition, but it’s physically based, and you can familiarize yourself with the technique in five minutes.

If it helps, think of it like the river Jordan–you know the dude who had to go bathe in the mud to heal his leprosy, but he refused? And his slave was like, “Dude, you totally would have done anything hard Elijah told you to, so why won’t you do this stupid shit?” And then the captain was like, “Fuck it, you’re right,” and jumped into the river Jordan.

Peeling Pretension Starts In Your Outer Hips

There’s a muscle that runs along the outside of your hips and upper thighs. Here, I’ll find a picture online.

Here you go. We’re looking at the tensor fasciae latae, right on the side there, at the top.

This muscle hugs your femur, and it can become enormously tight and overused in artificially supporting your skeletal system.

Step One Is Relaxing This Muscle

To slip into your authentic, unique writing voice, put your fingers into your fasciae latae on either side, and push down hard, ploughing through the muscle and down your outer thigh.

This works best if you start at the flat part outside your hip, just on either side of your pelvis, and then rub down, as if your hips were full of jelly, and you were squeezing it down towards your knees (or toothpaste in a tube; that’s a better analogy).

If You Feel Pain, That’s Good

Whether or not you hold bad tension here, combing the muscle down against the bone should create an influx of deeper breath through your lungs, and a sense of relaxation through your core.

If you tense hard against the relaxation, then you have serious problems through your spine. In this case, skip to step two, and also, start doing a half-spinal twist (yoga, I’ll find an image), every night before you go to bed.

Half-Spinal Screw

Link here. The internet wants to call this “Half Lord of the Fishes,” but I learned spinal screw. Whatevs. It will pull at your tensor fasciae, if you do it gently, and loosen the muscle on each side over time (which will improve the state of your spine).

Step Two Is To Find Pain In Your Mind

Everyone in the world carries fear, trepidation, and insecurity in their minds. This is formulated of different shades of color, depending on the tones of your aura.

If you close your eyes and imagine a scared feeling, you’ll get a sudden, warm sense of color in your imagination. It doesn’t matter what the color is; fix your mind on it, and allow it to seep out and cover your whole face, as if you’re wearing an air-bubble of that color around your skull.

What Will This Cloud Of Fear Do?

Fear creates common ground, and tastes like humility to the reader. Carrying insecurity and an ability to be hurt on your face protects you from pretension, since no frightened person can seem completely hauteur-ish.

So, To Recap Thus Far

First we rub our fingers hard along our tensor fasciae latae, to create pain, relaxation, and deep breath. Second, we find a lick of color that tastes like fear in our minds, and urge it out like a cloud around our whole heads.

Next, And Finally, We Write From The Groin

If you’re biologically male, you imagine your writer-brain in the nestling warmth of your testicles and the base of your shaft. If you’re female, you imagine the writer-brain in the depth of the vaginal and clitoral area.

This sounds insane, but remember, we’re river-Jordaning our way into fresh, authentic voice.

Anyone Who Writes From Sexuality Sounds Raw

Your authentic voice will rise naturally, between the sudden release in your hips, the deeper breath through your lungs, the exposed sense of self throughout your face and mind, and your writing impulses should flow surely and instinctively from the base of your sexual organs.

Yeah, it sounds really unconventional.

You Can Do This In Five Minutes

Improving the unique, fresh tone of your voice in writing is an integral part of winning followers. To recap, dig your fingers firmly along the latae on both sides (which will feed a need for sudden breath and relaxation through the lower spine), find and release a twist of fear-color from somewhere inside your brain, and then write while imagining the energy for such rolling up from the depths of your sexual organs.

The worst that can happen is you’ll get a deep sense of embarrassment for reading about Victor’s crazy methods on the internet. The best that can happen is that you’ll have instantly clearer voice in your writing, and a simple technique you can use to drop into your authentic voice any time.

You’re reading Victor Poole. To release deep rage, and process gendered fear, read my fantasy series when I put it out. I cleaned the shit out of my files this afternoon.

Editing For Clean Impulses

I cleaned off some emasculating incest energy, some spiritual possession shit, off one of my leading men during rehearsals for a show. He loved my guts ever after, and wanted to be best buds with manly kissing rights. He was a sweet and naive kiddo; he married soon after, and has not, I think, experimented with homosexuality since then. (If you were curious, I kept his greedy mitts off me, which he found infuriating.)

Editing Is Careful Work

Every time you write down any kind of thought, or description, or line of dialogue, your energy soaks into the writing, and imbues the phrases with a particular branding of emotion.

If your emotional packages build cleanly and organically, then the story flows, has excellent pace, and brings emotional satiety to the reader.

On The Other Hand . . .

If the impulse chains are broken, and the phrases are interrupted with wild, incoherent energy changes (which happens in most editing work, to be honest), the story becomes a mass of difficult-to-follow feel-nothing thoughts.

Was that paragraph confusing? Good.

The Editing Advice:

Now, how do you dig apart an organic energy chain? Take a piece of a clean draft, like so:

She had grown up near horses, when she had been a child in the far west, and though she had not been a horse trader herself, she was fond of the people who worked with horses. Horses reminded her of the time she had been free, before she had left her family, before she had been sold as a slave to the Eastern lands.

And Now, The Wrong Way

Now, here is some terrible editing that irretrievable disrupts the chain of impulses contained in that work:

The sweet child had grown up near many four-legged beasts. some of them horses, when she had been a little one in the farther west, beyond the oasis but not so far as the wilder places. Though she had never been closely associated with any horse trading families, or with those folk who bred and trained the riding and harness beasts used in those lands, she was still sentimental, and incredibly fond of anyone who worked with horses for their daily bread. Horses reminded her of the time she had been free, long, long ago, before she had left her poor family, and before she had been sold like a bundle of goods into the house of an Eastern merchant, to do his bidding and have no will of her own.

That was a shitty, painful piece of prose, wouldn’t you say? Unbearable.

And The Right Way

Now, by contrast, here is the same piece, edited with an eye to preserving the original impulse chain:

She had grown up near horses, when she had been a child in the far west, and though she had not been a horse trader herself, she was fond of the people who worked with horses. Horses reminded her of the time she had been free, before she had left her family, and before she had been sold as a slave to the Eastern lands.

If you look, there is only one word added. Of course, many paragraphs will need more adjustment than this, but for this particular chain of thoughts, one small correction is all that’s needed.

But Victor, My Writing Needs More!

What if your impulses are tangled before you started writing in the first place?

If you are like my wild stud-actor, the one who carried incest packages from his bitch mum, and who wanted to get in my pants more than anything in the world, you might be carrying impulse chains that scare you.

Victor, You’re Unbearably Conceited

Because, you see, when you were a tender thing, people touched your skin, and some of them were evil. The people were, I mean. When evil people hold a child’s hand, or tie their shoe, sometimes ugly energy soaks into the child’s skin. Children are incredibly absorbent, and are developmentally and psychologically designed to purge bad energy off their parents, in order to get grounding, rooted energy in their souls.

That’s Why Kids Love Unconditionally, At First

The part that’s important for today is that when you were a little kid, you picked up energy from people that was dangerous, and much of that energy is still tucked inside your aura.

So What Happens To That Energy?

When you write a genuine impulse chain, those dark energies loosen, and start to come free. You start, if you write what you really want to write, to chronicle frightening things.

In the process, the bad energy works free, and passes through your skin.

Yogis Call These Packages ‘Samskaras’

In an attempt to keep away from scary things, the vast majority of humans who write repress all their natural impulses, and write like frigid nuns.

And Now, The Editing Lesson

When you write, remember that you are, whether you try to or not, and whether you notice or not, writing down an unbroken chain of organic impulses, all in a row.

When you edit, remember that some of those impulses are foreign, evil, and genuinely frightening. If you edit them out, or away, or soften them, your work will suffer.

Many Of Them Don’t Come From You

If you try to heighten the effect of these foreign impulses, to make them seem more than they are, the work will suffer, and taste sour.

In Conclusion

Acceptance of the current state of affairs in your natural soul, and therefore, in your writing, is a good way to take a step towards cleaner work.

To see how you are handling your violence, sex, and coarse language, it is important to first examine the reason for it being there.

I imagine you’ve seen films before where a lady is unnecessarily undressed, or a person hits another for no story reason.

Because Empty Action Pads The Script (I’m Serious)

Shakespeare brought heads onstage, and severed limbs; he gored out eyes, and openly referenced incestuous rape and the dismemberment of women and children. One of his plays occurs almost entirely in a brothel, in fact, but you will find, in any worthwhile production of Shakespeare, that there is no immodesty in his language, or in his actions directed for the stage. (Embedded stage directions; it’s a long story.)

People Who Ruin Shakespeare Should Be Given Paper Cuts On Their Faces

People, shitty people (yeah, I’m looking at you, buster-oldy George) love to mangle Shakespeare, to add brazen fondling and breasts, and weirdly orgiastic violence that is not in any of the plays. They also like to add little scenes–to make the action more realistic, or more compelling to the modern viewer, they think.

All Of Which Sucks, Almost Always

Now, on to the subject of the day (or night, as the case may be): raw gore, and the manipulation of flesh in the service of whole fiction, is cathartic and pure, when it is handled with grace and modesty.

The Greeks, for all their blatant phallic pieces, had dignity and respect for suffering in many of their tragedies. The purpose of Oedipus putting out his eyes, and Jocasta hanging herself, is to bring the audience to a pitch of pity and existential terror.

The Bringing Of Emotional Climax Is The Function Of Fiction

And now, since the Greeks and Shakespeare do not always scratch the itch of contemporary genre fiction, here is some blood, and a bit of gentle violence.

A Sample, As Promised

Ethan the cyborg, having cut his metal down, is carving up a couple of his fellows, and stealing their alien inserts. Observe:

“What you are holding is a base insert,” Ethan said, grimacing as he began to wedge the other cyborg’s insert into his own thigh. Mary’s eyes widened, and her lips parted. He seemed to be working the insert in between his own muscles; the shape of his thigh moved in deeply unnatural ways as he worked. “I already have base inserts; I need the top pieces.”

“Doesn’t that hurt?” she demanded, watching him force the end of the insert deeper into his upper thigh.

“Not as much as you’d think. You get pretty numb, after the first four dissections,” he said. He made a small sound, like a tense man relaxing into a bath, and the insert folded neatly into the top of his thigh. Ethan sighed and pushed the bottom of the piece the rest of the way into the slit. Mary thought that it was like watching someone try to move a large piece of furniture through a narrow doorway; first the top made it in, and then the bottom was swiveled and forced into the opening.

“Are you all right?” she asked. She felt increasingly squeamish.

“I’m fine,” Ethan said. The insert went in with a strange click, and he extended his leg with a deep sigh.

“That looks so painful,” she said. The two insert pieces she held were hot and slick in her hands; she found, quite suddenly, that she didn’t mind the blood, but she minded the heat.

“It’s very good to get my old shape back,” Ethan grunted, working the metal deeper under his muscles.

And So,

Interestingly, tasteful swearing, and modest use of nudity, violence, and raw language and action opens the reader’s heart, and makes them receptive to the story, and the characters.

The gore must serve a core plot purpose, and be fully justified. Gratuitous violence, and all the rest, cheapens your work.

You’re reading Victor Poole. I have to rewrite almost the entirety of my cyborg sequel, because Vicard turned interesting, and developed unexpected backstory that I now get to incorporate through the threads of the previous parts.